Month: October 2010

Star Trek Online is now graciously offering the in-no-way-suggestive Seven of Nine outfit in the Cryptic Store. We here at Bio Break Industries suggest that any company who promotes such an outfit must first wear it for a week, just to make sure that it’s both practical and fashionable.

I mean, hey — it’s high heels, a corset and a wedgie, all rolled into a glittery fanservice uniform. I’ve never quite understood Star Trek’s sexuality, to be honest. Once you hit the TNG era, it’s like everyone became eunuchs but had to dress in spandex to suggest that they were still romantic go-getters.

Aside from that, I’d really love to see STO — and the rest of the Star Trek franchise — get over this Borg obsession that’s been going on a decade too long. They’re overexposed, not that scary or intimidating, yet it’s as if they’re the last “cool” thing the show ever did and everyone refuses to give that up.

Two quick notes about this poll. One, you can select more than one class if you’ve got a couple in mind. Two, if you’re not planning to play TOR, then this poll isn’t for you, which is why I’m not putting a “none of the above” option.

I haven’t turned my attention to The Old Republic for a little while now, mostly due to being in a patient waiting mode that isn’t really engaging with the frothing crowds out there. If you believe everything you read, the game’s already been a huge success and a huge failure, completely revolutionary and utterly derivative. Also, due to an oversight on BioWare’s part, hobbits have become a playable race.

Anyway, one of the pleasures and few viable activities that waiting fans can enjoy is to figure out guilds, factions and — most importantly — character classes. Some folks have it all figured out long before launch, and some just wait until they can get their hands on each of the classes to make a final decision. Then there are players who figure they’re going to do all of the classes anyway, so why fret about it?

Because I have no idea what guild I’ll be with or what side they’re going to be on, my plan is to pick one character class on each side and let the chips fall as they may. For my first character, I’m ruling out a Force user — the game’s going to be swamped with them, and Jedi just aren’t the huge thrill to me as they are to others. So that leaves Troopers and Smugglers on the Republic side, and Bounty Hunters and Imperial Agents on the Empire side. All four are attractive in their own way, and I’m really torn between the Smuggler and Trooper (especially after having played a Trooper at PAX).

However, if I do land on the Sith side, I’m probably going with an Imperial Agent over the Bounty Hunter. I just need a bit of distance from the fanboy gushing over Boba Fett, and the Agent — out of all of the classes in the game — seems the most enigmatic and unique. BioWare had to stretch a bit to make a case for the Agent as an iconic role, but after seeing yesterday’s preview of the class, I think they’re onto something here. People like spies, stealth and sniper rifles, and here’s a class that has all of them (plus orbital lasers, but that didn’t start with “S”). I’m not typically the stealth-and-snipe kind of player, but I think it’d be interesting to get out of my comfort zone and engage in that.

Still, there’s a lot of time between now and then (fingers crossed for April 2010!), and I still could change my mind. So what are you going to play?

“In playing I’ve found there’s not a lot of subtlety to the game. Holding back is not in the design motto. One could say that given an Ostentatiousness Scale that ran from one to twenty, one being Mother Teresa’s funeral garb, ten being shooting a hooker clown zombie in the face with a shotgun and twenty being this sentence; Forsaken World’s character design choices would consistently fall on the scale at places greater than 10.”

“Ultimately we have to ask ourselves the question: what is fair to us as consumers, and as gamers? Is the subscription option really the fairest solution? For everybody? Or most players? If your answer to that doesn’t contain a great deal of room for gray areas, positive and negative examples, and different folks’ varying playstyles, then you are viewing the issue in a stark and superficial light. The idea that Cover Charge + subscription = good and NCC + microtransactions = bad grossly oversimplifies the issue and ignores almost all of the many variables involved. It is ideology rather than opinion, and as such it’s not susceptible to the vicissitudes of reason or reality. It is, to put it bluntly, moronic.”

While I don’t typically obsess over stats and hits on the blog — I can’t remember the last time I even checked the daily count — I think this is a pretty cool milestone. Over one million readers have stopped on by this blog over the past two years, and that is a number that’s personally staggering.

I just want to thank you all for being so supportive of Bio Break. I always love to see comments and discussions from posts, and I appreciate you giving me an audience for my random MMO rambles. My main two rules for this blog are to entertain myself and entertain you, and I hope I’ve accomplished those both.

Now if you’ll excuse me, we have a two million mark to hit. Go grab a friend!